


The Most Vibrant Colour

by vallereith



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Twincest, anyway stop reading the tags and go read the fic goddamn, i hate myself so much for this one, i wrote this in a sleep deprived mania state, im posting it from the bottom of the garbage can, just enough fluff and angst to murder a tough grown man, no character death i didnt have the guts, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:38:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10532829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vallereith/pseuds/vallereith
Summary: A Blossomcest soulmates AU where you only see in black and white until the day you meet your soulmate."As long as she remembers, Cheryl has always seen the world in colours."





	

**Author's Note:**

> haha i hate myself but i couldn't let go of this idea without writing it out. you know a ship is highkey an otp when it makes you publish your work for the first time. (spot my Afterlife With Archie references for 10 points to your hogwarts house.)

   As long as she remembers, Cheryl has always seen the world in colours. It had taken her a dreadfully long time to understand that that was not normal, but then again, it hadn’t been a surprise. Nothing in her life has ever been normal.

   Thornhill Manor is a cheerless and gloomy place, but nonetheless, Cheryl finds it beautiful. The long halls and tall gothic façades are playgrounds for stray sun rays come to shed some light on her hair and make the colours, the forbidden colours, bloom in all their splendour. On all the property, Cheryl’s favourite place is the garden. As a child, she spends hours there, just like another bud amidst the blossoming lilac shrubs, the narcissi, the rainbow tulips. In the summer, you can find her underneath the red roses by the fountain, curled up with a book, or admiring the fascinating shift of the reflections in the water. In the autumn, fiery golden leaves fill her with a warm sort of melancholy. The world looks most beautiful as it dies.

   When winter comes, she prefers the holly underneath her window, its spiky velvet green leaves and crimson berries creating a jarring splash against the snowy backdrop. It reminds her of Jason.

   Cheryl knows what the colours mean. She knows what a soulmate is, knows they’re rare and a blessing. Cheryl knows her soulmate is Jason. How else could she explain that she’s been allowed to see the full beauty of the world around her since the very first time she’s opened her eyes? But it’s painful, it’s cruel, her soulmate is no blessing. _Curse_ is what she would call it if anyone was to ask, which they don’t. Nobody knows and Cheryl is the queen of keeping secrets. She’s never asked Jason about the colours either, because she doesn’t want to know, she’s afraid of the answer so she keeps quiet. And Jason never mentions it, never talks about it with her, safe for the one time when they’d still been only children and he’d made her promise that he would be the first to know when she meets her special person. She’d smiled then with a heavy heart and swallowed the lie, and she’d promised to tell him immediately.

   “Good,” he’d said. “And remember, Cher-Cher, I always know when you lie.”

   Except he doesn’t. Cheryl only ever lets him know that she’s lying about secrets that are not worth keeping. And this secret… Cheryl aches to tell him every day, because she knows what soulmates are, knows they’re rare and that she’s never going to get another one. But she also knows that it will never be and she doesn’t want to lose him. Maybe this is what their life is intended to be, two red roses, entwined, her happiness depending on his ignorance.

   On the day that Jason and Polly Cooper become an item, Cheryl stomps on all the rose bushes in the garden, ruining her expensive shoes and ripping her white tights to ribbons on the thorns. Her mother calls her insane and confines her to her room without supper, but Cheryl is above that anyway. She has no appetite. She doesn’t talk back and doesn’t try to explain, she shuts her door and sinks in her bed. She closes her eyes and prays really really hard that when she opens them, the world will be just a plain monochrome.

 

   It’s Jason who comes to her later that night, after their parents have gone to bed so that their mother could not scold him for it. He opens her door in silence just enough to slip through and closes it just as discreetly. She sits up against plush pillows, but keeps staring out of the window until he slips between the silky sheets on her side and wraps an arm around her shoulders.

   “What’s the matter with you,” Jason whispers against her ear and presses a kiss in her hair. Cheryl bites her tongue and blinks her eyes a few to chase the sudden burning. She’ll be _damned_ if she cries or shows any other sign of weakness.

   “Nothing at all,” she says in her most casual tone and feels the small puff of air against her skin when he lets out a disbelieving huff.

   “Cherry, tell me,” Jason orders and his sister can hear both imperativeness and some very concealed worry in his tone. She hates him for it in that moment.

   “Are colours beautiful?” Cheryl asks instead of giving a straight answer. She finally turns her eyes to him and bites down even harder on her tongue. He’s so painfully handsome in the moonlight. His skin is so pale and his eyes are so green and his hair and his lips are a deep dark soft ruby red. She wants to kiss him so badly.

   His expression betrays confusion for a second and something like… fear? But Jason regains his composure too quickly for Cheryl to be able to read anything into it and he rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’ve no idea,” he states in a voice that is just short of annoyance. “But she makes me happy.” Cheryl nods and leans her head against his shoulder. _What do I make you_ , she wonders. _Why are you here?_

   “Do you know what I think is certainly beautiful?” Jason speaks again, pulling her just a little closer to his own body. “You.” His nose buries in her hair and despite the painful clenching of her heart, Cheryl smiles. Polly Cooper is no one. Polly Cooper cannot take him away from her, cannot separate them. Nothing in the world could. When Cheryl falls asleep, she’s serene.

 

   Peace in Cheryl’s life makes itself rare. As far as she remembers everything around her has been uncertain. At school, she’s always in the centre of this or that kind of teenage drama. At home, her parents have always been in a cold war against mostly her, but against Jason too sometimes, and even against each other, although they probably think that their children have not noticed that. Despite how Cheryl pretends to flourish from the discord, she’s weary. Everyone else’s issues are always so damn loud, so stifling, that it never gives her a single second of respite for her to maybe start dealing with her own. And, God gracious, does she have a lot of those!

   It’s a beautiful hot afternoon towards the end of June and Cheryl is setting up a bouquet of white dapple red carnations in an antique vase in the entrance when her brother walks in. He has a look on his face that reminds her of barely controlled panic, so Cheryl sets down the vase and steps towards him.

   “Jay-Jay, what is it?” she enquires, own voice almost trembling because she can just feel that whatever it is, it’s about to be big. His eyes lift towards her full of regret and Jason sets his lips in a tight line, grabs her arm and pulls her towards the stairs. Only once they’re safely shut inside his room does he let her go and she rubs the spot on her arm where his fingers have left a blossoming mark. “So?” she asks again, a little more bite in her tone now that she’s found some courage. Whatever the hell is going on with him, it doesn’t give him a right to treat her like this!

   Jason turns around and looks at her, really looks at her for a while, and then he starts laughing. He laughs so loudly that it’s almost a mad sound and Cheryl finds herself even more irritated. “ _Va te faire foutre,_ ” she cusses and spins on her heels for the door, but just as she’s reaching for the handle, he stops.

   “Polly’s pregnant,” Jason drops. Cheryl’s hand misses the knob and swings on the side of her body. A buzzing starts in her ears and it feels like the floor is turning liquid, dancing under her feet, making her lose her balance.

   “What?” Cheryl’s voice is almost inaudible.

   “Polly is _fucking_ pregnant, Cheryl,” Jason enunciates for her slowly and coldly. She can’t tell if he’s angry at himself, at the Cooper girl, at her, or at the entire world. But Jason never cusses and he never looks so vulnerable, so despite the blood rushing in her head and the black spots swimming in front of her eyes, Cheryl walks up to him and pushes back on his chest until he’s sitting on the bed. Then she sits on his side for good measure before her body has the good idea to pass out. She takes in a deep breath and squeezes his hand in hers.

   “Do you know for sure?” she asks. “I mean, who knows if the little slut isn’t lying for… for money, or to ruin you, or…” Her voice dies down at the glare Jason gives her. He looks dangerous. Cheryl swallows hard before speaking again. “What are you going to do?”

   “She wants to keep it.” Jason sighs and racks a hand through his perfectly groomed red hair. It messes it up and Cheryl strains to stop staring at how good that makes him look. This is _not_ the time.

   “Do you?” she asks him. Jason looks at her like she’s crazy and shakes his head. “Did you tell her that?” He lets out a short laugh and shakes his head again. “What the _fuck_ , Jason!”

   “I had no idea how to react!” he snaps back in his defence. “I don’t want this from her, she loves me, she wants to spend her freaking life with me, but I don’t love her, she’s nothing but a distraction, because I’m trying to… I’m lying to… God, I thought I could do this.” His head drops in his hands and his shoulders shiver in a single silent sob. Cheryl’s heart breaks on the spot. She lays a hand on his arm softly in a comforting gesture. The things he’s saying make no sense to her, but she’ll ask later. Now she just wants to make him feel better. Ever since they’re children, Cheryl has been able to feel her twin’s pain even more strongly than her own.

   Jason reaches up and takes her hand in his and then his breathing evens out. “I want to leave Riverdale,” he says and looks up at her. His green eyes are set, resolute. “Come with me. Run away with me. Just the two of us together, we’ll go somewhere no one has ever heard of us before. Anywhere.”

   “Why?” Cheryl gasps and feels something cold on her cheeks. She realises she’s crying. Cheryl hates crying, but there is nothing she would love more than to run away with him, to leave everything behind and be just his for always and have him be hers forever. She wants out.

   “Because, Cher. You’re the most vibrant colour of them all,” Jason whispers, voice tight with pain. His hand that is not holding hers lifts to cup her cheek. His thumb brushes away a tear and she leans into the touch like she’s been starved for affection her entire life. She can’t believe her ears, can’t believe her luck, but she doesn’t care right now. Everything be damned, Cheryl thinks as she leaps forward and presses her lips to Jason’s. Nothing else matters in that moment but the fact that he leans into it more.

 

   On the morning of July 4th, the Blossom twins went for an early morning boat ride on Sweetwater River. Authorities found their car abandoned and the boat washed up on the opposite shore later in the afternoon but no sign of the twins. As much as they searched the environing forest and the lake for a body or a clue, all that turned up was a single white glove. Jason and Cheryl Blossom’s disappearance, perhaps possible death, headlines the next morning’s paper.

 

   Speeding down an interstate with both windows open, an entire day’s ride away from Riverdale, Cheryl reaches for her brother’s hand and kisses the back of his palm. Jason spares her a glance away from the road and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> so, initially, i wanted to make this into a prequel to the Riverdale tv series, as in something that happened before Jason's death and end it with that, but i couldn't. i didn't have the guts. i love him so fuckign much i just want them to be happy, so fuck it.
> 
> anyways, thanks for reading? follow my trash riverdale & archie comics sideblog on tumblr @jaseblossom & have a nice day!


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